Today I say goodbye to a dear friend that I have known for years. A friend who has traveled and grown older with me with each passing year. A friend who has been reliable, always with me no matter what .A friend who stuck with me through high school, college, and for six years of my marriage. That friend is my 2001 Oldmobile Alero.
When I got my driver's license my parents let me use a hand me down car from my older brother. It was a 1991 Dodge Daytona with a hatchback. Now don't get me wrong, having a car when I was sixteen was the best, but the Daytona had definitely seen better days. There were stickers all over it and my brother "fixed" up the exhaust so instead of coming out the back of the car (like ALL other cars), he rerouted it to come out under the driver's side door. He claims it was for the style and sound, but all it really did was making having the driver's window open impossible. An added perk to the "fixed up" exhaust also allowed me to set off car alarms when I went down the streets because it was so loud. It also bottomed out whenever leaving a parking lot. The scraping sound of the metal across the concrete was a familiar sound to me. But it was a car, and I was the first of my friends to have one, so I was grateful.
My mom didn't feel the same way that I did about the good old Daytona. She was worried that it wasn't safe and hated the loud noises that always came from it. So she surprised me and spent some money that she had saved for me to attend college on the new Alero. She told me that the money she had saved wasn't enough for college anyway and that this way I would actually be able to physically get to college.
(The picture below was taken on the day the Alero and I first met)
Fast forward 180,000 miles and here we are. It's been a great reliable car, but now that the frame is so rusted that it is no longer safely attached to the vehicle it is time that we need to say goodbye. So farewell sweet friend. Hope Victory Auto Wreckers enjoys you as much as I did.
I recently came across an obituary for an older gentleman I sang in a choir with sometwenty years ago. And the first thing I remembered about him was when I got my first car, a 1984 Honda Accord hatchback, and he insisted on taking the choir out to the parking lot with a bottle of champagne to christen it. Those first cars are significant! The pictures add a lot of fun to this post too.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think that I would be emotional about getting rid of my old rust bucket, but I definitely did.
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